Profoundly inspirational poverty quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
Famous Poverty Quotes
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. May Sarton
I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing. Neil Gaiman
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all. Ban Ki moon
You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. Frank McCourt
Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance. Kofi Annan
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you! Charlotte Brontë
I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Groucho Marx
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Mahatma Gandhi
Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious. Deng Xiaoping
What a weary time those years were to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. Charles Bukowski
Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without. Immanuel Kant
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. Dom Helder Camara
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. Confucius
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Aristotle
As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest. Nelson Mandela
There is no Them. There are only facets of Us. John Green
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. Henry Ford
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed, and well fed. Herman Melville
Poverty is the mother of crime. Marcus Aurelius
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. Franklin D. Roosevel
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. Benjamin Franklin
If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help the only ones. John Steinbeck
Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems. Kailash Satyarthi
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. Victor Hugo
What information consumes is rather obvious it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. Herbert A. Simon
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. Eugene Debs
If you’re raised with a poverty mentality, nothing is going to change it. I do know some really stingy billionaires. I come from such a generation of hand to mouthers. Robert Downey, Jr.
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. Mother Teresa
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. James Baldwin
Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. Coco Chanel
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. Adam Smith
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. Charles Darwin
Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time. Grace Abbott
It takes nothing to stay in poverty, but everything to break free from it. Idowu Koyenikan
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. Rainer Maria Rilke
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. Albert Einstein
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. Henry David Thoreau
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. Herman Melville
No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty. Jon Corzine
Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him? Mother Teresa
You alleviate poverty by trickle down economics. Jacob Rees Mogg
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. Plutarch
Poverty is the worst form of violence. Mahatma Gandhi
The real opposition is that between the ego bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity. Erich Fromm
We can win respect in the world only if we are strong internally and can banish poverty and unemployment from our country. Lal Bahadur Shastri
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa
A quality education grants us the ability to fight the war on ignorance and poverty. Charles B. Rangel
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. Anatole France
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. John F. Kennedy
When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. Basil the Great
Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. Coco Chanel
The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us. John Perkins
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us. William J. Clinton
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel its poverty by how little. Sherrilyn Kenyon
Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools. J. K. Rowling
The surest way to remain poor is to be honest. Napoleon Bonaparte
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds. Aristotle
It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country. Paul Farmer
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts
Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child. Anthony Horowitz
The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden. Jay Z
Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. George Orwell
It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It’s God’s will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt. Joel Osteen
Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. George Eliot
To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don’t imagine, it will never happen. Muhammad Yunus
Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. Aristophanes
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty. David Hume
Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps. Brennan Manning
Lack of education, old age, bad health or discrimination these are causes of poverty, and the way to attack it is to go to the root. Robert Kennedy
We’re not stupid! We’re just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction. Orhan Pamuk
Capitalism for the record has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the world. Trish Regan
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial. Oscar Wilde
Born in poverty, he will take supreme power. He will bankrupt the country. Raising an army in the Milanese marches, he will drain Faenza and Florence of gold and people. Nostradamus
Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth. Jane Austen
